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Straighten out the keys | |||||||||||||||||
There is no longer any reason why we shouldn't have the keys of a keyboard line up straight. The staggered placement of keys is a throwback to when each key corresponded to the physical bar containing its letter on most typewriters. Now is probably a good time to straighten everything back so our fingers no longer have to contort to reach each key. While we're at it: - Give the thumbs more keys to use: central shift, control, and alt OR shift, command, option OR whatever, yeah, okay; all the whitespace keys (space, tab, newline). - Add more keys to the numpad: colon, currency sign, octothorpe, all the braces, actual 'times' and 'division' keys, and perhaps its own shift key. - Add more punctuation (em and en dash, ellipsis, proper quote keys), perhaps giving them their own group on the left side. Maybe even put the left quotes on the left and vice versa, and put the accent grave somewhere where people won't mistake it for a left quote. - For the really ergo-friendly, rotate the key planes so the palms no longer face down. - Stop putting the touchpad smack in the center of a laptop, which is most often underneath the right hand while typing._______ Keyboards show the truth: letters are disorganized; numbers line up straight.
nayhem, Sep 13 2006
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After having extended a reasonable amount of effort is getting comfortable with the current key arrangement which works fine for me I would rather not go back to fumbling around for a key in a new arrangement.
That would put all my typing work that I have done to achieve 50wpm down the drain... there is actually a reason why the keyboard was designed as such.
Below is an excerpt from Wikipedia
Frequently used pairs of letters were separated in an attempt to stop the typebars from intertwining and becoming stuck, thus forcing the typist to manually unstick the typebars and also frequently blotting the document[1]. The home row (ASDFGHJKL) of the QWERTY layout is thought to be a remnant of the old alphabetical layout that QWERTY replaced. QWERTY also attempted to alternate keys between hands, allowing one hand to move into position while the other hand strikes home a key. This sped up both the original double-handed hunt-and-peck technique and the later touch typing technique; however, single-handed words such as stewardesses and monopoly show flaws in the alternation.
Hope this helps you understand the design a lil bit more.-JM
You know this is a tough one. I have often thought it was time to change the keyboard back to the original design but impletementing this would be like trying to get 500 million herion addicts to all quit at once. Daily life is pretty much intertwined with the dinosaur keyboard layout we have today. I figure your best bet is to re-invent the thing and take down to some third world country. Stick around till a new dictator comes to power and sell him on your invention. With any luck he will make everyone use your new flanged key board. Soon they will be able to boast that they have the fastest typist in the world! US companies will move their call centers thus boosting the economy and from there it is a short hop to world domination. Good luck!
I don't mean that all the letters should be put back into alphabetical order. I mean that their physical placement should be more grid-like. With current keyboards, you have to *slant your fingers* to reach the proper keys. I just want simple, joint-friendly extend-and-retract motion, nothing lateral. QWERTY is just fine for now.
If you want to talk about logical letter arrangement, I could put up another idea...
...right over here</A>. This idea deals with letter arrangement, not keycap locations.
Since all keyboards these days are nothing more than electronic touchpads it should be do big deal to rearrange the letters as you see fit. Might take a bit of messing around to reroute the circuits but it shouldn't be impossible.